XBox 360 hard drive upgrade

[protek]

As I still have an Xbox 360 that I've bought on January 2006 and it still hasn't suffered the notorious RROD, I thought I'd upgrade the meager 20 GB drive to a bigger one. With Xbox360 you practically have two choices: buy the price driven M$ hdd module or do some haxx0ring.

Whereas in a PS3, a hard drive upgrade goes pretty much: back up data, swap and format hard drive, restore data and you're done, the Xbox 360 is a totally different story. First of all, you'll need a hard drive enclosure. Secondly, there's only a small selection of hard drives you can choose from. Thirdly, you'll need to upgrade the firmware of the hard drive so that the Xbox would recognize it. Thank you very much, M$!

There are lots of instructions, how to do the swap yourself. I used this one as my reference. In the instructions they dismantled the hdd enclosure for doing the swap but I took a different approach and ordered an empty enclosure from DealExtreme. It was like $7 including shipping. I'm still waiting for that to arrive.

In the meantime, I bought a 4 GB USB stick for firmware flashing, a WD Scorpio Black 250 GB SATA hdd and M$ data transfer cable. You actually don't need the cable as you can use an USB hdd for transferring the data but since the cable price wasn't that bad and the transfer process will be simpler, I chose to buy the cable. Here are the parts that I've gathered so far.

I've already created a Win98 emergency boot on the USB stick and used that to flash the firmware onto the WD hdd. Now it's simply a matter of installing the hard drive into the enclosure, when it arrives, formatting it in the XBox360 and transferring the data from old hard drive to new.

More to follow...

 

[AmiNeo]

Would like a list of drives you can use and advice on where to find firmwares if poss

 

[Powerpie5000]

Just buy one of those cheapo X360 drives from China... It's just a 2.5" Western Digital SATA drive in a plastic case and they work the same as the overpriced M$ branded ones

Here's a 250GB one and it's in the UK : http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/250GB-250G-25...t=Video_Games_Hard_Drives&hash=item3caf8445e2

 

[protek]

@Amineo: The instructions I used lists only WD Scorpio series drives. You can find it and the firmwares behind the link.

@Powerpie: The cheapo drive from China would've been slightly cheaper option. But, then again, where's the fun in buying stuff that doesn't involve a bit of haxx0ring.

 

[merlinkv]

@protek

Hi mate

I followed your link... I don't know... but in my three consoles the working ones are:

WD Scorpio Blue Series BEVS/BEVT 250GB

With two HDD's of the Black series with the correct firmware... my consoles don't recognize, maybe is an issue of consoles revision? :shrug: .. So, I use only Blue series and they works like a charm

 

[mjnurney]

Don't forget that if you want xbox 1 emulation it wont work by doing this , your missing a few steps and you'll get an error on the xbox.

You have to copy the emulator from a real hard drive and partition the drive properly- but that's only if you want xbox 1 emulation.

 

[protek]

The emulation is on the hard drive? How clever design! :roll: Well, I do need the emulation because I just might play a round of Forza and I don't feel like swapping the hard drive. Gladly, there seems to be instructions to copy the stuff from other partitions too with Xplorer 360.

I had a slight newer version of hddhackr.exe and can't recall that it had prompted me whether I want to install the partitions 0/2/3. I have to assume that it does this by default, then. Once I get the enclosure, I'll report back about the recognition of the drive and the rest of the installation.

 

[merlinkv]

Hi again,

I heared about the possibility to use HDD's biggers than 250GB.... I have some 500GB units on my desk.....

Anyone knows about a link or good tuto?

Thanks in advance

 

[AmiNeo]

Ahem, isnt emulation always on the hard drive?

 

[protek]

Hi again,

I heared about the possibility to use HDD's biggers than 250GB.... I have some 500GB units on my desk.....

Anyone knows about a link or good tuto?

Thanks in advance

I think 320 GB is the biggest ATM. You can use a 500 GB hd but it will utilize only 320.

 

[merlinkv]

I think 320 GB is the biggest ATM. You can use a 500 GB hd but it will utilize only 320.

Thanks for the info mate

I wait, maybe a new firmware comes shortly :roll:

 

[Bootay]

You can put any size HDD you want in it if you jtag it. In order to do that your firmware must be 2.0.7371.0 or lower, you will need to do even more hacking and you will probably get banned from Live if you use it. The benefits from jtagging include installing any size HDD and installing games on the HDD without needing the disc. I personally haven't done it because my 360 has a newer firmware, but if I had the right version I would do it in a heartbeat just to not need to dig through discs to play a game. I don't use Live so I dont care about the possible banning part, but I know that most 360 users do use Live and do care about it.

 

[protek]

I got the enclosure today and installed the hard drive inside. Pictures to follow later.

 

[protek]

As promised here are some pictures of the hdd enclosure. It arrived in a very official looking package.

Here's what's inside. No instructions, just the enclosure and the badge that has no size printed to it even though the packaging suggests 250 GB.

Pr0n you say? Well here ya go. A simple pcb that has the SATA connectors and leads to the Xbox connector.

Here's the WD Scorpio connected to the board.

Even though there were no instructions, the assembly was no brainer and I had it in one piece in about five minutes. You can see that it is meant for the Elite as it is black instead of grey that is in the Premium. There was even a warranty sticker that goes on top of one of the screws.

I now need to take a backup of the partition 2 of the original drive to get the emulator, format the new drive and transfer my save games and other stuff on it and then restore the emulator and I should be all set.

 

[Powerpie5000]

You can see that it is meant for the Elite as it is black instead of grey that is in the Premium.

What about the 250GB Super Elite? It's a white 360 with grey HDD enclosore just like the premium/Pro

 

[protek]

I hit a bit of a snag. I formatted the new drive in the Xbox and it showed the the free capacity 225 GB as expected. I had taken a backup of the partition 2 and copied the partition 3 contents with the Xplorer360 Extreme 2. I could restore the partition 2 to the new drive but wasn't able to copy the partition 3 contents back. I thought I'd try copying the settings with the cable in the Xbox so I installed the new drive into the console and connected the old one with the cable. When I started the data transfer I was surprised to see that free capacity was now only 108 GB! The restoration of the partition had somehow changed the the drive to think that it was a 120 GB unit instead of 250 GB.

Interesting was also that when I had formatted the new drive into full capacity, the Xplorer 360 showed it only had a partition 1. When I restored partition 2, the partition 1 had disappeared and there was partition 2 and 3 in its place. When I transferred user data, partition 0 was added.

I wonder what went wrong? The new hard drive seems to work. I got my profile and other stuff and even the original Xbox emulation works. I just don't have any content on partition 3 and the capacity is half of what it's supposed to be.

 

[AmiNeo]

Yup since you backed up a partition this includes the partitioning table. That means the hard drive now thinks it has 2 120GB partitions, the one you restored and the one thats the space left over.

Since the Xbox isnt capable in its software to read more than 1 partition you now have only a 120G usable drive.

Only work around I can think of is to use the xbox to backup your data and then wipe the drive deleting the patitions and restore it to a 250GB blank Xbox drive, then restore the backups.

The 360s only read 15GB from any 1 external drive so you may need to backup in 15GB chunks to seperate external hard drives. Not sure if there is an option to backup on the network, but knowing MS likely not.

 

[protek]

Data transfer isn't the problem as I have a cable for that but the emulator has to be transferred by backing up and restoring one of the partitions.

 

[AmiNeo]

Then you have your answer friend Backup the Xbox drive with the Xbox itself. Then restore the drive to its 250GB capacity and transfer the data back You'll need to backup a 250GB partition by the sounds of it to get the emulator on it.